By and large agreeing with the plaintiffs’ suggestions on damages, a Philadelphia jury has awarded nearly $78.5 million to a class of some 186,000 current and former employees of Pennsylvania Wal-Marts who may not have been properly paid for missed rest breaks and off-the-clock work.
The award roughly reflects the total amount asked for by lead class counsel Michael Donovan of Donovan Searles in Philadelphia during his damages-related closing argument Friday morning.In turn, Wal-Mart’s lead attorney in Hummel v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Neal Manne of Susman Godfrey in Houston, had requested that the jury take into account problems with the plaintiffs’ experts’ statistical analyses and hand up an award more along the lines of $7 million.
